Absolute monarchy, in the modern acceptation of the term, appears to have
been unknown among the Greeks. The nearest approaches to it were the
τυραννίς, which was, in origin at
least, a weak imitation of Persian despotism, and the Macedonian
military kingship. It is true that Aristotle in his classification of
βασιλεῖαι (Pol. 3.14-17) discusses what he terms παμβασιλεία or βασιλείακυρία, but he treats the question rather from the theoretical
than the practical point of view; such a βασιλεία is only justified by the ἀρετὴ of the individual or family being far in excess
of that of any other individual or family (Pol. 3.17).

The heroic kingship was hereditary: see Thuc. and Aristot. above, and
Il. 2.186, σκῆπτρονπατρώϊον, ἄφθιτοναἰεί. Each successor
was hailed by the approving voice of the πλῆθος. The office was of divine institution, and the kings
are, in a certain sense, children of Zeus, the king of the gods. Thus
they are διοτρεφεῖς and διογενεῖς (cf. Hes.
Th. 96, ἐκδὲΔιὸςβασιλῆες), and even θεῖοι,
as partaking of the divine nature (Od.
4.691). The genealogies of both the royal lines at Sparta are
traced back to Heracles, son of Zeus (Hdt.
7.204; 8.131). Aeneas was son of
Aphrodite, Nestor grandson of Poseidon, Ajax Telamonis and Odysseus were
great-grandsons of Zeus. The king's office is derived from Zeus
(τιμὴδ᾽ἐκΔιόςἐστι,Il. 2.197); he is king to whom Zeus
grants it (εἷςβασιλεύς, ᾧἔδωκεΚρόνουπαῒςἀγκυλομήτεω, ib. 205); the sceptre of Agamemnon
descends from Zeus in direct line (ib. 101). The kings in Homer are
characterised by personal beauty; vigour of body and mind is a condition
of the maintenance of the office (Od.
11.174, 184, 495). Manual employments are often part
of a king's accomplishments. “Odysseus, in the island of Calypso,
is a wood-cutter and shipbuilder (Od.
5.243, 261); Odysseus on his
throne was the carpenter and artisan of his own bed (Od. 23.195-201); Odysseus in disguise challenges Eurymachos the
suitor to try which of them would soonest mow a meadow, and which
drive the straightest furrow down a four-acre field (Od. 18.366-375).” (Gladstone, Juvent.
Mundi, p. 420.) Laertes has a passion for gardening (Od. 24.226 f.), Achilles and Paris for
the lyre (Il. 3.54).

The king succeeds to certain royal possessions and goods, termed his
τέμενος. These were granted for
signal services in war or elsewhere, and passed from father to son. Cf.
Il. 9.578 (of Meleager), 6.193 f.
(of the Lycians and Bellerophon); Od.
11.184 (of Telemachus), 17.299 (of Odysseus), 24.205 (of
Laertes); Il. 12.313; Od. 7.150; Hdt.
6.161, where a corresponding τεμενος is given to Battus, the founder of Cyrene. It is
thought that this was the solitary instance of private property in land,
which was otherwise managed on the commonfield system, held in temporary
tenure (Ridge-way in Journ. Hell. Stud. 6.319).

The king convoked the Council of the Elders (βουλὴγερόντων,Il. 2.53) to deliberate on all matters of
policy, military as well as civil (Il.
9.89; 7.382 f.). There seems to
have been no obligation upon the king to consult the βουλή, or to take its advice if consulted,
but none the less was it his duty to do so (Il.
9.100-108). The decisions of
the king, or of the king and council, were made known to the general
assembly of adult male citizens (ἀγοράἀγών). No debate was allowed; the multitude received the
will of the king with silence or with applause; objections were
summarily dealt with. It is not till the Odyssey that any special regard
is paid to the δήμουφῆμις (cf. 6.273;
14.239); though promises like those of Agamemnon, to give seven cities
as his daughter's portion (Il. 9.149),
or of Menelaus, to sack one of his own cities in order to establish
Odysseus therein, are either poetical exaggerations or proceed from
those who are βασιλεύτεροιτῶνἄλλωνβασιλέων.

The title ἄναξἀνδρῶν, forty-four
times applied to Agamemnon in the Iliad, and applied also to five other
sovereigns--Aeneas (Il. 5.311), Euphetes
(15.532), Anchises (5.268), Augeias (11.701), and Eumelus (23.288)--is
regarded by Gladstone (Juv. Mundi, p. 151) as of foreign
rather than Hellenic colour, patriarchal rather than Greek, savouring of
serfdom and absolutism. Jebb, on the other hand (Homer,
p. 47), denies this; and, regarding ἄναξ merely as a descriptive epithet, suggests a metrical
reason for its use in the passages quoted. Grote (Greece,
ch. xx.) seems to incline to the former view.

The αἰσυμνητεία or αἱρετὴτυραννὶς is stated by Aristotle to
have existed ἐντοῖςἀρχαίοιςἜλλησιν. It differed from βαρβαρικὴβασιλεία not in being constitutional (κατὰνόμον), but simply in being not
hereditary. The office lasted sometimes for life, sometimes for a
specified time, or during the performance of a specified duty. As far as
its power was concerned, the office was “tyrannical;” it is
classified as a βασιλεία, as being
αἱρετὴκαὶἐκόντων (Ar.
Pol. 3.14). Solon was practically
αἰσυμνήτης of Athens during his
revision of the constitution, though the title is not applied to him by
any Greek writer.

The Laconian kingship is defined by Aristotle (l.c.) as στρατηγίατιςαὐτοκράτωρκαὶἀΐδιος, to which he afterwards adds the fact that it is
hereditary (κατὰγένος). The king's
authority is by no means supreme (οὔκἐστικυρίαπάντων), although eminently constitutional
(μάλιστατῶνκατὰνόμον); his
power only begins when he is outside Laconian territory. This view of
the Spartan kingship is clearly drawn from its position in times nearly
approximating to Aristotle's own. Weakened by the encroachments of the
γερουσία, the ἔφοροι, and the ναυαρχία, it preserved only the shadow of its ancient power.
Thus the Spartan kingship is really the “exception which proves
the rule,” that kings disappeared from Greece before historic
times. For the duties, position, &c., of the Spartan kings, see
GEROUSIA

Some of the kingdoms which lay outside the circle of Greek politics
lasted much longer than those within it. The Molossian kingdom of the
Pyrrhidae, which derived its origin from the son of Achilles, extended
its sway over the whole of Epirus shortly after the Peloponnesian War:
cf. Thuc. 1.136; 2.80. It was no doubt due to the strictly constitutional nature
of its rule that the Molossian kingdom lasted until the latter half of
the third century B.C. (Ar. Pol. viii. (v.)
11 init.). The kings every year, after
sacrificing to Zeus Areius, swore to govern Epirus according to the
laws, and the people for their part swore to protect the kings according
to the laws. Transgression on the part of the king relieved the people
from their oath, and thus we find that the king was sometimes removed
and another appointed (Plut. Pyrr. v.; Diod. 15.13).

The Macedonian kings traced back their origin to the Heracleid race of
Argos. Perdiccas I. was the founder of the monarchy (Hdt. 8.137, 138;
5.22). Originally established at Edessa,
the dynasty extended the area of its sway by the conquest of the Briges,
the Pierians, the Bottiaeans, and the inland tribes. The succession was
hereditary. The Macedonian monarchy of Philip and Alexander approaches
more nearly to the military imperialism of Rome than any other Greek
institution. It is, true that Arrian (Exp. Alex. 4.11)
asserts that Μακεδόνωνἄρχοντεςοὐβίᾳἀλλὰνόμῳδιετέλεσαν: but this was probably more the
result of a prudent policy than of any definite circumscription of. the
royal power. The king and the army appear to be the sole instruments of
government, the army even acting as a criminal court. (See Quint. Curt. 6.32, 25,
“de capitalibus rebus vetusto Macedonum more inquirebat
exercitus; in pace erat vulgi; et nihil potestas regum valebat nisi
prius valuisset [p. 2.549]auctoritas.” )
This, however, probably bears reference only to military offences. We
hear of a Macedonian assembly ( “ad contionem vocato populo,”
Just. 14.6), but it “appears to have
been summoned chiefly as a mere instrument to sanction some
predetermined purpose of the king or military leader predominant at
the time.” There is “no evidence of co-ordinate
political bodies or standing apparatus, either aristocratical or
popular, to check the power of the king” (Grote).

2. Roman.

That Rome was once governed by kings, and that the later republican
constitution was a development, traceable in its outlines, of an
original regal rule, was the universal belief of Roman antiquity itself,
and has never been doubted, even by those scholars who have expressed
most disbelief in the details of such accounts of the kingship as have
been handed down to us. Some consideration of the nature of the evidence
on which the Roman monarchy rests is clearly necessary for an
appreciation of its real nature and character. Of the evidence in this
question there are two main lines. One is that of tradition; for the
literary accounts we have of this period cannot be considered as other
than traditional, since the earliest historical records from which our
present sources were derived were not, so far as we know, composed until
some 300 years after the expiration of this period, and there is little
or no original documentary evidence of a credible nature on which we can
suppose even the earliest of these accounts to have rested (Lewis,
Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. ch. iii.
p. 70; Seeley, Livy, Introd. p. 17). The other and surer
line of evidence is to be found in the manifest survivals of an original
kingly rule which meet us everywhere in the Roman republic, and which
enable us partly to supplement the accounts of tradition, but more often
to correct them where it seems likely that they have transferred to this
early period the constitutional usages of the later republic. Some of
these survivals, such as the rexsacrorum
and the interrex, throw considerable light on
some points of the regal constitution; while others are merely traces of
the past monarchy indelibly imprinted on the later republican community.
Such are the existence of the REGIA, or kingly palace, on the Sacra Via
(Becker, Topogr. § 223), the festival of the
Regifugium on Feb. 24th (Festus, s. v. p. 137 and p. 230; Orelli,
Inscr. ii. p. 384; Ov. Fasti, 2, 685), and the days marked by the formula Q R C F [see REGIFUGIUM]. Finally, if we were to seek
evidence, beyond tradition and such survivals, for the original
existence of a Roman Rex, it would be found in the probabilities of a
constitution such as that of Rome, so peculiar in the conception of its
supreme magistracy, with its different personal representatives, each
possessing in theory a single indivisible imperium, having been the
development of a constitution in which the imperium was really
indivisible because vested in a single person. That this form of
constitution was in no degree peculiar to Rome, but that in this, as in
other respects, Rome was merely a typical Italian community, there is
every reason to believe. A distinct survival of an original kingly power
is found in the standing dictatorship of certain Latin towns, such as
Lanuvium (Cic. pro Mil. 10,
27).

The theory on which the Roman monarchy rested is not quite paralleled in
any ancient or modern state. The Roman state has been aptly described by
Mommsen as a “constitutional monarchy inverted”
(Hist. of Rome, i. p. 84): that is, the ultimate
sovereignty resided not with the king, but with the community he
represented, and the constitutional limitation was not that of personal
rule by the people, but of the people by personal rule. The Roman
monarchy rested on authority delegated by the people; and this is true
whatever we consider the immediate basis to have been on which the
king's power rested, whether we regard it as elective, hereditary, or
held by right divine. It is shown by the fact that the sovereign
attribute of pardon rested with the people in the last resort (Liv. 1.26; Cic.
de Rep. 2.31). Secondly, by the fact which
is stated by tradition, and rendered probable by the later theory of
republican legislation, that the Roman people was the sole source of
law, which, though elicited by the king through his sole right of
initiative, could only be rendered valid by the assent of the burgesses
(Dionys. A. R. 2.14); and
finally that tradition affirms it to have been the source of honour. We
are told at least that the regal insignia of Etruria, which the Roman
kings adopted, were only assumed after ratification by the senate and
people (Dionys. A. R. 3.6, 2; Cic. ib.); and it is possible that
the appointment of special officers of state, though in theory they were
merely delegates nominated by the king, had to be ratified by similar
legescuriatae. Such at least seems to
be implied by the account given by Tacitus of the institution of the
earliest quaestores (Ann. 11, 22; cf. Dig. 1, 13, “quaestores quos
ipsi populi suffragio crearent” ).

To such a personal representative had the Roman people transferred the
whole of the executive, and so much of the legislative power as is
implied in the sole right of initiative, without, however, forfeiting
certain ultimate rights of their own. The personal head thus constituted
possessed a variety of titles which marked the various aspects of the
collective authority he exercised; and which, when this administrative
authority was differentiated in republican times, were applied to
different individuals. As supreme judge he would be judex, as leader in war praetor (prae-itor: cf. Varro,
L. L. 5.80); while the title dictator, which signified a temporary, though incomplete,
resumption of the kingship in republican times, and the title magisterpopuli which was applied to this office
(Festus, p. 198), were probably [p. 2.550]originally
mere appellatives of the king, applied according to the aspect in which
his power was viewed. The title that marked him out as supreme head of
the state, and summed up all his other powers, was that of Rex, the
“orderer” of the state, the regulator of all things
human and divine (Mommsen, Staatsr. ii.3 p. 5); and this title of Rex, when it had ceased to apply to
civil duties, and had gained the connotation not of ordered
administration but of absolutism, was still applied to the Rex sacrorum,
the orderer of religion, who had inherited that branch of the kingly
functions. Similarly the position of the Rex as supreme head of the
state was denoted by the word regnum (Cic. de Rep. 2.27); but the
powers with which the king was invested were summed up under the word
imperium. While regnum denotes the position of the monarch, imperium denotes the powers on which this
position was based (Mommsen, l.c.;Cic. de Rep. 1.26).

The unique position in the state which the Roman king thus held, and
which has been compared to the position which the Roman paterfamilias
held in the family (Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, i. p. 61),
was expressed by certain special marks (insignia), which distinguished him from the rest of the
burgesses. The question as to what were the special insignia of the
Roman monarchy is rendered difficult by the fact, that while they must
necessarily have borne a close relation to the insignia of the supreme
magistrates of the Republic, they yet in all probability differed in
some degree from the latter; but to what extent it is almost impossible
to determine, for the tendency of tradition is, on the one hand to
assimilate the two, on the other, while assuming the consular and
praetorian insignia to be an inheritance from regal times, to attribute
to the monarchy other special marks of royalty which it derives mainly
from a foreign source. The chief marks of the regal as of the later
consular imperium were the fasces and
lictores. (As regards the number of the
king's lictors, see LICTOR
p. 65.) That the king could have the axe borne within the fasces, even
while remaining within the walls, we must believe, if we admit that he
was exempt from the necessity of admitting the provocatio, and could
exercise the same full jurisdiction domi
and militiae. Next, the wearing of the
purple must have been wholly reserved for the king, but whether merely
in the form of the later consular praetexta
(Liv. 1.8) or of the full purple robe
besides the praetexta attributed to him by Dionysius (3.61) is uncertain; the latter,
however, is more probable: for in the later consulship we probably see
throughout a limitation of the insignia which accompanied the limitation
of the powers of the supreme magistracy. The purple robe which Dionysius
assigns along with the togapraetexta to a
foreign origin, must, however, be identical with one variety of the
trabea, undoubtedly one of the insignia
of the king, and said to have had a purely Latin origin. It is connected
with the name of Romulus (Quirinalistrabea,Verg. A. 7.612), and is associated in
the later Republic chiefly with the officers of religion. If the
distinction between the three kinds of trabea (Servius inAen. 7.612)--the purple one for the priestly
office, that of purple and saffron for the augurs and of purple striped
with white for the king--existed in this early period, they must have
been all worn by the king for the performance of the several functions
of his office. The trabea is probably an inheritance the Roman republic
owed to the kingship: and it is difficult to see how the idea could have
originated of differences in this dress being appropriate to difference
of functions, had the distinction not originated in a period when all
these functions were united in the king (cf. Serv. inAen. 7.187. 11.334; Plin. H. V. 8.48, 9.39;
Ov. Fast. 2.503). The eagle-headed
sceptre and the golden crown tradition also attributes to the king, as
well as the solium or throne (Cic. deFin. 2.21, 69; Dionys. A. R. 3.61, θρόνον:
ἐλεφάντινον) and the chariot within the walls, from
which the sellacurulis was derived
(Festus, p. 49). Most of the regal insignia, the crown, the togapicta and the chariot especially, reappear
in the Roman triumph, and render probable the statement that the
triumphal insignia of the Roman magistrate were but the revival of those
of the monarchy (Dionys. A. R.
4.74).

Amongst the privileges of the king must be counted that portion of the
public domain ( “arvi et arbusti et pascui lati atque uberes,”
Cic. de Rep. 5.2, 3; Liv. 2.5) set apart exclusively for the king's
use. Though in a sense the owner of the whole state, and as such capable
of commanding the munera of the burgesses
(Liv. 1.56), he was peculiarly the owner
of these royal domains, which he might employ for his own support; and
in a peculiar degree also would he be master of the services of that
large clientela, the body of half-free
citizens that helped to make up the plebs,
which were only connected with the community through him its personal
representative, but which he might make more closely dependent, as
clientes, on other leading families of
the community, if it was his pleasure (Cic. de Rep.
l.c.).

The mode in which the Roman kings entered on their position in the state
is one of the most difficult questions connected with the monarchy. It
is true that tradition is unanimous in representing it as
elective-depending, that is, on free popular election, or on such
election guided by the senate (Liv. 1.17;
Cic. de Rep. 2.17,
31)--and in representing the procedure as being conducted in every case
with the regular formalities of the comitia, the auctoritaspatrum,
and the interregnum: the last of which,
though in the republican period an extraordinary office, is represented
as having been a part of the invariable constitutional procedure in the
transmission of the kingly power (Liv. 1.47).
When, however, we consider the manner in which such a tradition may have
grown up,--that the conception probably arose with the Roman jurists,
who had before their eyes the mode in which the consuls and other curule
magistrates were appointed to their office; when further we consider
that what seems the alternative, the hereditary principle, was never
represented by tradition as having been strictly recognised in the
transmission of the Roman monarchy, we see how inevitable it was that
they should have concluded it to be purely elective. But there [p. 2.551]are many considerations which throw doubt on
such a theory. In the first place, the election was regarded as free in
a far wider sense than the election of the higher magistrates at Rome;
since, if we are to trust the traditional accounts, Roman citizenship
was not a necessary qualification for the monarchy. Thus the non-burgess
Numa, the foreigner Tarquin, the slave's son Servius, are all
represented as having been elected kings of Rome (Liv. 1.18, 35, 42, 46): although
Roman citizenship must have been a necessary qualification, even if
patrician descent was not; and it is unlikely that while the interrex had, down to the latest republican
times, to be a patrician, the king might have been not only a plebeian
but a non-citizen (Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. p. 7, n. 2). The
absence of any mention of a qualification for election throws suspicion
on the circumstantial accounts given of the king's election, and the
suspicion is increased by an examination of the legends of Rome's
foundation so far as they refer to the institution of the monarchy. To
bear out the juristic theory of election, we should expect to find the
first king of Rome an elected monarch. But, on the contrary, we find the
community organised through the king rather than the king through the
community. There is no trace in the best tradition of a first election
to the kingship; for the account of Dionysius, that Romulus was chosen
to be the supreme head by a vote of the people, chiefly through his
character of founder of a colony, belongs to Greek sentiment, not to
Roman: and the salutatio mentioned by Livy
(1.7) on his successful taking of the
auspices, represents merely the recognition of his imperium as favoured
by heaven. From the traditional accounts of the earliest kings, which
represent Romulus as the son of a god, as awaiting the verdict of heaven
before he assumes his rule, and Numa his successor as insisting that the
same verdict should be appealed to (Liv. 1.7
and 19), a conclusion might be drawn that the Roman monarchy rested on
divine right (cf. Rubino, Untersuchungen über
römische Verfassung, p. 107); but, as will be shown
in considering the question of the inauguration of the king, this theory
raises into a material what was probably merely a formal element in the
monarchy: and there is nothing in Roman history or sentiment that could
give colour to the idea of such a pure theocracy. That the monarchy was
hereditary is contradicted by the facts of the traditional history of
the period, and expressly denied by other authors, as by Cicero
(de Rep. 2.12, 24) and Appian (App. BC 1.98), who state that the early
Romans in the choice of their kings had more regard to merit than to
birth; and when the hereditary principle is first realised in the last
king, the monarchy comes to an end. On the other hand there are
considerable difficulties, besides those mentioned above, in the way of
assuming, as the Roman constitutional thinkers did, that the king's
position depended on free election by the people; for, in what must be
regarded as definite survivals of the Roman monarchy, such election was
not recognised. The Rexsacrorum was not
elected, but nominated by the Pontifex Maximus (Dionys. A. R. 5.1; Liv. 40.42, 8); and it is
probable that, at the close of the monarchy, when the religious
functions of the priest were first separated from the secular functions
of the magistrate, the older method of regal appointment would have been
retained for the former, the new principle of election introduced for
the latter. Again, the Dictatorship, which was practically a
reestablishment of the kingship for a temporary purpose in republican
Rome, also dispensed with election. Perhaps another piece of evidence
against the theory that the kingship was purely elective is to be found
in the fact that the king was not bound to allow the provocatio any more than the early dictator was (Liv. 2.18 and 30; Dionys. A. R. 5.75; Mommsen, Staatsr. ii.3 p. 163). Now it seems to have been a principle in
republican Rome that when there was election, then the provocatio was
demanded as a right; and if we consider this principle to be applicable
to the earliest period of Roman constitutional history, the fact that
the people had no standing right of provocatio against the king will be
an argument against their having the free power of electing to this
office. If we are led by these considerations to regard the monarchy as
not purely an elective office, we must consider that it was the right,
and perhaps the duty, of the king of Rome to nominate his successor;
that this nominatio, which became only a
form under the Republic, but which was again revived with some of its
old material force in the election to office under the principate (D. C. 53.21, 7;
58.20, 3;
Tac. Ann. 1.14, 81), was the chief mode of transmission of
office in the regal period. The survival of the interrex into historic
times as a factor in an elective process is no proof that the Roman
monarchy was purely elective (cf. Seeley, Livy, Introd.
p. 56). Had there been no due nominatio, and consequently no distinctly
markedout successor to the monarchy, the duty of providing such a
successor would naturally have lapsed to the senate, from which body the
interrex was appointed (Liv. 1.17: see INTERREX and SENATUS); and it is probable
that the Interregnum, in the time of the
monarchy, as in that of the Republic, was an extraordinary measure, only
resorted to when the regular line of succession had been broken and the
regular procedure interrupted, through some unforeseen cause. But
although the monarchy cannot be regarded as depending on free election
on the part of the people, there are certain quasielective processes
connected by tradition with the appointment of the king, both on the
part of senate and people, which there is no reason to discredit. That
the authority of the senate (auctoritaspatrum) was constitutionally necessary for the appointment of
a successor to the monarchy is stated by Livy in connexion with all the
transmissions of the supreme power (Liv.
1.17, 22, 32, 41, 47); and, even if we do not hold the theory of a definite
election, will still be a natural outcome of the constitutional
necessity the king was under of consulting the senate in all important
measures that affected the popular welfare, one of the most important of
which would be the nomination of a successor. Such a procedure would not
spring from any theory of the senate's possessing elective power, but
simply from the principle that underlay the whole Roman community, both
in its public and [p. 2.552]private relations, that no
man in authority should act without taking advice of his concilium. The other principle is that of the
formal ratification of the king's power by the people, which continued
into the Republic under the title of the Lex Curiata; and was the formal
sanction always required for the ratification of an imperium already
assumed (Cic. de leg. Agr. 2.1.
0, 26; 2.11, 28; ad Farm. 1.9, 25: see LEX CURIATA and PROCONSUL). That it was a
merely formal ratification in the time of the monarchy is stated by
Cicero as being shown by the fact that the king himself proposed the Lex
Curiata which was to sanction his own power (Cic. de Rep. 2.13, 25: “Numam--qui
quamquam populus curiatis eum comitiis regem esse jusserat, tamen
ipse de suo imperio legem curiatam tulit” ), as was indeed
necessary, since no other power but the king had the right of putting
the question to the people; and it might undoubtedly be legally, though
not perhaps constitutionally, withheld by the king, as we are told it
was withheld by king Servius during the early part of his reign (Liv. 1.42). It is thus carefully distinguished
from the election to the monarchy, and the people were supposed by the
Roman jurists to have performed two distinct acts in the creation of a
king first in the way of election, and next in the way of formal
ratification of such an election (Cic.
de Rep. 2.17, 31, “Tullum Hostilium
populus regem, interrege rogante, comitiis curiatis creavit, isque
de imperio suo--populum consuluit curiatim” ). That such a
formal sanction, however, should have been required where free popular
election had preceded, seems unlikely; and the Lex Curiata is a far more
explicable procedure if we suppose the king to have first been nominated
independently of the people, and then to have challenged their
allegiance in this manner: and although in the Republic this Lex was
taken by magistrates already elected, as a necessary preliminary to the
exercise of the full imperium, yet there it was a mere constitutional
survival, with its meaning partly lost, and far more a matter of form
apparently than it had been in its origin. That an exercise of the regal
imperium, which was not sanctioned by these two acts of senate and
people, the expressed will of the one and the declared allegiance of the
other, was regarded by the later authorities as unconstitutional, is
shown by the language of Cicero. where he says (de Rep.
2.24, 44) that the last injustusdominus of
Rome ruled “neque populi jussu neque auctoribus patribus.”

But the king's assumption of his power was regarded as incomplete until a
religious act had been performed which showed that the gods sanctioned
the rule which he had assumed. The ceremony of taking the auspices which
had this meaning was observed by magistrates of the Republic before
entering on the exercise of their office [AUSPICIA;
AUGUR]; but the religious act performed by the king is
represented by our authorities as having been, not merely this taking of
the auspices, but a special inauguration. There is a difference between
these two acts. In the ordinary form of the auspicia the official
entering on office had himself the right of spectio which belonged to Roman magistrates as such, was
never regarded as a merely priestly function, and still continued to be
possessed by magistrates under the Republic, even when their office had
been completely divorced from that of the priesthood. In the special
inauguration, on the contrary, the spectio
is taken by some other than the person inaugurated; as in the case of
Numa, the first who is represented as being thus inaugurated, a
specially appointed augur is employed to watch for signs (Liv. 1.18, “de se deos consuli
jussit” ); unlike Romulus. who is represented as taking his own
auspices on the Palatine (Liv. 1.6). This
ceremony of inauguration by one of the priesthood other than the person
so inaugurated is represented as having been from the time of Numa the
standing procedure in the act of entering on the regal office (Liv. 1.18). If we can argue in this case from
survivals, some support is given to the assertion by the fact that the
Rex Sacrificulus had, as we know, a special inauguration (Labeo, ap.
Gel. 15.27, 1; Liv. 40.42, 8). But this resulted from the fact of his purely priestly
character; and if we suppose that the inauguration as well as the taking
of the auspices existed for the early kings, we must suppose that
already at this period there was a separation, in idea at least, between
the functions of the king as priest and his functions as magistrate: the
special inauguration through the spectio of another attaching to him in
his first character, the taking of the auspices through his own spectio
belonging to him in his other character as magistrate (Mommsen,
Staatsr. 2.1, p. 8); but that so marked a separation
of functions existed in the regal period is unlikely, and it seems more
probable that the inauguration of the Rex Sacrorum, who represented the
priestly side of the king's functions, was but a continuation of the
first act of taking the auspices performed by the king.

There was no separation in fact, and probably none in idea, between the
position of the king as priest and his position as magistrate. The Roman
state was by no means a theocracy. It united the civil and religious
powers as closely as possible, but employed the latter not as an
infallible guide to, but as a test of the effectiveness of, the former.
Thus in the personal head of the state the two were indissolubly
combined. The king was first priest as he was first magistrate (Dionys. A. R. 2.14, 4.74; Plut. TG
15); and as he possessed the nomination of all subordinate
magistrates, so he possessed that of all subordinate priests. Thus
tradition tells us that the three great Flamines, the Salii, and the
Pontifex were instituted by Numa, although most of the important
ceremonies of religion were performed by himself personally (Liv. 1.20), as the augurs had been appointed by
that “best of augurs” Romulus (Cic.
de Rep. 2.9, 16; de Div.
1.2, 3); and the appointment of special individuals to fill these
priesthoods must have been likewise a part of his office; as, for
instance, the nomination of the flamines that belonged to the Latin
dictator must have been likewise in the hands of the king (Ascon.
in Mil. p. 32); and all the powers that, with the
secularisation of the Roman civil magistracy passed to the Pontifex
Maximus as the head of the Roman priesthood may without hesitation be
attributed to the king. In republican times the Rex Sacrorum himself was
[p. 2.553]nominated by the Pontifex Maximus, the
reason being that, since the theory of nomination was carried on in his
person, he could only be nominated by the greatest member of the
priesthood; but the nature of his duties gave him precedence even over
the Pontifex Maximus as well as over the three great Flamines in the
ordosacerdotum (Festus, s. v. p. 185;
Labeo, ap. Gel. 15.27, 1; Ov. Fasti, 2.21), and points to
the position of the king as priest, while his regularly recurring sacred
duties, his sacrifices on the day of the that the new month and at the
festival of the Agonalia (Varro, L.
L. 5.3, 54; Festus, s. v. Agonium, p. 9), point to the fact that the king's sacred
functions were a regular cultus, not the
occasional religious duties of a Roman magistrate. [REX SACRORUM]

The task of determining what were the civil powers possessed by the Roman
kings is easier than that of deciding what were the precise modes of
their exercise. That they possessed the sole executive power of the
state, without any of the limitations with which the magistrates of the
Republic were hampered, appears in the traditional accounts of the
kingship, and in the more general notices of ancient writers. That the
Roman kings possessed πᾶσαἀρχή
(Plut. TG 15), and exercised the
imperium at their own discretion (Tac. Ann.
3.26), follows naturally from the fact that we can in no way
imagine them bound by the definite restraints which shackled the Roman
consul or praetor in the exercise of his imperium. These restraints were
the limitation of office by time, and the collegiate principle which
carried with it the right of intercession. The king held office for
life; he had no colleague, and could therefore be trammelled by no veto.
Again, he was freed from the necessity of allowing the appeal, and from
the necessity of delegating his power to other officials or appointing
special standing offices for special purposes. As the dictatorship could
suspend for a time the free action of offices at Rome, so the monarchy,
which was a standing dictatorship, was not bound to permit such offices
to exist. The regal imperium being thus unshackled, there was no room
for the distinction, recognised in republican times, between its
exercise domi and militiae; and the fact that the full power exercised over
the lives and persons of the citizens, which the Roman magistrate
possessed until a late period of the Republic without the walls, was
possessed by the king within them, was the most characteristic aspect of
the king's position in the state. But, legally free from restraint as
the king's power undoubtedly was, it could not have been free from the
limitations imposed by custom and constitutional usage. The acts of one
king must have bound the acts of his successor, and the assertion of
Tacitus that Servius Tullius was the author of laws “meant to bind
even the kings themselves” (Ann. 3.26), may be
taken in its least sense to mean that it was hardly possible for a king
to overstep the constitutional usages of his predecessor. Such usages
are said to have been those embodied in the legesregiae collected by Papirius (Dig.
1, 2, 2), the
earliest customary public law of Rome. Amongst such constitutional
obligations was that of consulting the senate in any important matter.
The formula Dionys. of the Fetiales, which is said to have dated from
their institution, either by Tullus Hostilius (Cic. de Rep. 2.17) or by Ancus Martius (Liv. 1.32), contains the clause, “but on
these matters we will consult the elders at home, how we may obtain
our rights” (Livy, l.c.); and, as the
king was expected to consult the senate in matters affecting the
international relations of the state, so no doubt in the most important
of these--in declarations of war--it was the custom people should be
consulted (Dionys. A. R. 2.14). But
there were other manifestations of his power as general over which the
people would have no control. Such was the disposal of the booty taken
in war and of the conquered lands (Dionys.
A. R. 2.28 and 62; Cic. de
Rep. 2.9, 14), a right which belonged
subsequently to the Roman imperator in the field, limited only by the
constitutional necessity of consulting his consilium, and of subsequent ratification by the senate; the
first of which may also have been requisite in the regal period. Such
also was the right of making treaties with conquered states (foedus), which would have been a part of his
administrative duties in the field, over which the community could have
no control. Not only was the senate consulted as a body on matters of
state, but the special consilia, we are
told, which the king chose to advise him in special matters, as in the
exercise of his jurisdiction, were taken from this body (Dionys. A. R. 2.14); again, we are
told that regular delegates were appointed by the king for the exercise
of special functions, and that some of the names of offices we meet with
in republican or imperial times go back to the regal period. Of these
the praefectusurbis was the most
important; he was an alterego left behind
by the king for the control of the capital, when himself absent on
foreign service; he is defined by Tacitus as one “qui jus redderet
ac subitis mederetur” (Ann. 6.11; Liv. 1.59; Dionys.
A. R. 2.12), and must have had delegated to him the whole of
the executive power of the king, except perhaps the right of questioning
the people. This office was, from its nature, merely occasional; but
there were others to which portions of the king's power were more
regularly delegated. The collective imperium of the king may be
described by its three sides--of command in war, jurisdiction, and the
jusrogandi. That assessors or
delegates were chosen for the first two there is reason to believe; but
that the last power was or could be delegated is improbable, although
both Livy and Dionysius represent the tribunus
celerum as summoning the assembly (Liv.
1.59; Dionys. A. R.
4.71). For military command the king possessed delegates such as
the tribuni celerum (Liv.
1.59). In the matter of jurisdiction there are abundant
statements to the effect that such power was delegated, but whether to
standing or to specially appointed officials is uncertain. We are told
that a distinction was made between cases brought before the king, the
more important being tried by himself in person, the less important
transmitted judges chosen from the senate (Dionys. A. R. 2.12); and again of Servius Tullius, that,
while public suits were tried by him, private suits were entrusted to
special judges, the king giving the formula (νόμουσ--ὅρουςκαὶκανόνας,Dionys. A. R. 4.25) under which the
case was to be [p. 2.554]tried. In the only detailed
instance we have of a public suit, that of Horatius for perduellio (Liv.
1.26), delegates were appointed in the shape of duumviriperduellionis, the king giving the
formula within which the case is to be decided. The duumviri mentioned
in this passage are probably to be identified with the quaestores ( “examiners” or
“inquirers” ), the institution of whom is ascribed to
the regal period and especially to the reign of Tullus Hostilius (Tac. Ann. 11.22; Dig.
1, 13, “ita Tullo Hostilio rege
quaestores fuisse certum est” ), and who are said originally
to have performed the duties afterwards exercised by the triumviri capitales (Varro, L. L.
5.11). That it became the duty of the king in the more important
cases--those especially involving the caput
of a Roman citizen--to employ a consilium of some sort is stated in the
charge brought by Livy against Tarquinius Superbus (Liv. 1.49, “cognitiones capitalium rerum sine
consiliis per se sol]us exercebat” ); but whether such a
consilium is to be identified with the judices, such as the duumviri, to
whom the king relegated a case, or whether they were a board summoned to
advise him when he exercised his own personal jurisdiction, cannot be
determined. We are told further that all civil jurisdiction was
performed in the king's courts (judiciisregiis,Cic. de Rep. 5.2, 3), and
that these were generally relegated to judices along with a formula such
as that given in criminal jurisdiction we may well believe (Dionys. A. R. 4.25). From the trial of
Horatius given by Livy (1.26) two further
facts appear which have been noticed already, and are important as
showing both the limits and the powers the Roman jurists assigned to the
king's jurisdiction, both of which are amply borne out by such revivals
of the kingly power as meet us in later Roman history. One is the fact
that the king has no power to pardon; pardon resides with the people,
the ultimate sovereign. The other is the fact that, though the
provocatio existed in the regal period (Livy, l.c.; Id. 8.33;--Cic. pro
Mil. 3, 7; de Rep. 2.31; Festus, s. v.
sororiumtigillum, p. 297), yet the
citizens have no standing right of appeal against the king like that
secured by the Lex Valeria. The king Tullus Hostilius allows the appeal (Liv. 1.26,
“Si a duumviris provocavit provocatione certato;” Id.
§ 8, “auctore Tullo ‘provoco’
inquit” ); and the fact that the appeal might not have been
so allowed, and was a matter not of law but of constitutional usage, is
shown by the similar freedom of the early dictatorship from the
necessity of allowing the appeal (Liv. 2.18,
3.55; Dionys. A. R. 5.75. In Liv. 8.33,
where the dictator is appealed against, the instance of Horatius is
taken to show that the king had allowed, and therefore the dictator
should allow, the appeal). The limitations of the king's power came
here, as elsewhere, not from the force of law, but from the necessity of
observing formalities once established. The existence of the senate and
the custom of the provocatio formed the two permanent checks on the
capricious exercise of his power. His rights, too, were everywhere
balanced by duties which precedent had established, and which are
especially apparent in matters of religion, of which we know most from
the survival of these duties in the person of the REX SACRORUM (see that
article). Although in the civil organisation of republican Rome a
continuity is traceable with that of the monarchy (and indeed, if it
were not, we could not hope in any degree to reconstruct the latter),
yet it is none the less true that the abolition of the monarchy was an
act of revolution not justified by the theory of the constitution. The
justification is usually found by Roman writers in the character of the
last king, who had broken through the constitutional usages of the
monarchy (Liv. 1.49, 4), and above all had never challenged the allegiance of the
people (Cic. de Rep.
2.2.4, 44). That there was some fearful abuse of the kingly power
by one of its representatives is shown not merely by the fact of the
revolution, but by the associations which immediately gathered round the
words rex and regnum, and remained connected with them to the close of the
Republic (Cic. de Rep.
2.30), these names becoming still more hateful as contact with
the outer world made the Romans realise in single rule only the evils of
Oriental despotism (cf. Liv. 2.8; Plut.
Poplic. 12; Dionys. A.
R. 5.19). The mere charge of regnumadfectatum often proved the ruin of eminent men in Rome,
such as Sp. Maelius and Tib. Gracchus (Cic. ib. 27), and lastly of the
dictator Caesar (Cic. Fam. 11.2. 7,
8: cf. ad Qu. Fr.
1.2, 16; ad Att. 8.11, 3).